There was a story on the front page of the newspaper about Avrum’s death. It did not reveal much about him. It said he had been born in Germany in 1887, that he had immigrated to America in 1907, that he had worked as a peddler, a furrier, a teacher, and, finally, as an interpreter for the United States Immigration Service at Ellis Island. It said he had retired to the Catskill Mountains and had died there in the Highmount Home for Retired Citizens, which was supported by Jewish charities. It said he had been the Home’s oldest resident and, perhaps, the oldest citizen in the state of New York.

The story was six paragraphs long.

I thought: Newspapers know so little about people.

I wanted to read that Avrum Feldman loved music as other people love God, that he could recite passages from the librettos of operas as easily as schoolchildren could recite the poetry of Kipling, that, though he could not read music, he could be seized by its power and, in a stroke of inspiration, lift a twig from the ground and conduct imaginary orchestras with such conviction and tenderness that passersby—even those who thought him crazy and an old fool preoccupied with romantic nonsense—would stop and watch and become so enthralled by the majesty of his performance they would believe they heard violins from the voices of birds.

I wanted to read that Avrum had had a gift of insight that was rare and astonishing in its simplicity and in its accuracy. At least, it had been with me.

I wanted to read that when people had laughed at Avrum, the sound of their laughter was the sound of fear, that their voices had trembled because he made them uneasy. I wanted to read that when they walked away from him, they had stopped and lifted their faces and listened, wondering if they, too, could hear the voice of Amelita Galli-Curci.

I wanted to read that Avrum Feldman had accepted as his friend a boy of the rural South, barely seventeen, and that he had declared it destiny that we should meet. What else could it be? he had reasoned. Why would he, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, almost seventy at the time, meet, and like, a boy of the rural South? And in the Cat-skill Mountains of New York? Why? Destiny, Avrum had pronounced.

He had heard horror stories, he told me that summer, in 1955, of Southern men in white bedsheets burning the cross of their Christ on the lawns of the Jews. He knew, as fact, that Jews had been lynched for nothing more condemning than the sounds of their names. He had read of it, he raged. He had heard the rabbis speak of it. He knew that, in the South, Jews were ostracized, that their rights, like the rights of the Negroes, were denied them.